OUR LORD'S DIVINE NATURE

Continuing from yesterday's study of Romans 1 verse 20 - 21, the last attribute of God that is revealed from the created order is our Lord's divine nature. The Lord's divine nature is the expression of His being as God.

In the way the universe and its contents point to the divine nature of God, we would be able to deduce that God is personal and that He is triune which means God is one but in three persons.

An aggressive inquiry into the origin of the universe reveals a logical impasse that cannot be breached aside from conceding that there is a personal decision maker involved in the building of our universe.

To presume that the universe sprang up on its own, one would quickly run into an intractable infinite recursion loop from which there is no escape.  At every layer of recursion, one would either have to have an infinitely old unstable singularity that suddenly and inexplicably destabilized or go back one recursion level and end up with the same improbable conundrum ad infinitum.

To get out of the loop, we are forced to introduce a deliberate or intentional choice to initiate a destabilization that results in the emergence of the universe. It is this intentionality requirement that points to a person as the originator of the universe. 

Getting to the triune part of God's  divine nature, could the existence of the natural world convincingly express the triune nature of God to minds that are willing to understand?

Yes. Once you conclude that there is a personal God who created the universe out of nothing  and who then made all things within the universe including the living creatures around us and, of course,  we ourselves, we must then consider the characteristics of this person who is able to do this. 

This is a sentient being who can create  out of nothing and, as well, conceptualize and create entities outside of Himself. A thought experiment will take you to a surprising revelation about such a being.

Think of this being conceptualizing a chair and a chair is materialized. A being who made the universe would have to be able to do this by definition. Now,  imagine this being thinking about Himself. In view of His powers, a second being would materialize who is a representation of Himself.

Remember, God is eternal and has always been able to think of Himself and so this second person is eternal as well. We are able to reach an understanding where at least two eternal persons axist as part of the divine nature of God.

When God says, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased", this is how the Son exists eternally and is an exact representation of God the Father. This is why Jesus could say, " He who  has seen me, has seen the Father" in John 14 verse 9.

An especially astute student of nature  could go further, consider the nature of the personal creator of the universe and  wonder if the God of the universe and His Son could properly be understood to be alive?  

In our realm, there is a distinction between living and not-living creatures and the living property seems to be independent of the material part of these creatures. That is why a living thing can become a non-living thing without losing any material and even though some would say life is about the organization of material and not about a spark of life, the presence of life itself seems to do the organizing and is not the result of the  organizing of material.

 That is why a cell can multiply from a single cell into the highly organized state of trillions of cells forming a human being and being alive remains the characteristic that permits the continuation of this process.

One could then say that the property of life was introduced right from the initiation of living things and is continually passed down from one generation to the next especially when no known examples exist of non-living material giving rise to living things. The living 'flame' so-to-speak, that is given from God is also the one who gives the Son of God the properties of life and as such, must be eternal as well and must have the power and extent of God in order to be the life of God. 

It is this line of thought that would yield the conception of the Holy Spirit who is also named the Spirit of Life in the scriptures in Romans 8 verse 1 - 2.

It can hereby be exclaimed that the created universe reveals the divine nature of God pertaining to His personhood and His triunity.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Bless the Lord's mighty name.

Amen.

OUR LORD'S INVISIBLE ATTRIBUTES

Yesterday, we looked at our Lord's eternal power that serves as a witness to God's existence . Today,  we continue with Romans chapter 1 to look at the invisible attributes of God that are listed as another witness from creation affirming that God truly is there.

To consider the span of our universe and to ponder the astonishing things it contains like solar systems and habitable planets and the  biological realm of living creatures, is to confront a question that has stupefied thinkers for eons. 

What qualities would a being have to possess in order to bring forth the varied and beautiful phenomena we see around us?

What qualities would the creating being have to have in order to conceptualize three dimensional space set in a river of time? What would such a creator have to be like in order to set in place a full-scale space/time continuum?

What would it take to imagine and design living things and imbue them with life? 

What about conciousness and intelligence? What would the maker of such things need in order to set out the parameters of sentient life and then further to that, build sentience that operates at a level high enough to ponder these very questions we are asking?

Romans chapter 1 verse 20 - 21 describes God's invisible attributes as being clearly seen.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

The invisible attributes are described as 'clearly seen' because the realm we live in is a metaphoric representation of the realm from which God created ours.  

If, as an example, we consider the intelligence of living things and see how this intelligence is required to decipher the dynamics of our world and as well, be used to engage in the building and sustaining of complex systems, we can perceive the intelligence that the originator of such an attribute would have to be  imbued with in order to dispense it.

 This would be like examining the workings of advanced computers and their purposes and being able to perceive how intelligent the builders  of such systems would necessarily  have to be.

This visible functioning  of intelligence among people  is a representation of the intelligence possessed and operated  by the invisible God.

In another example, the distinction between living beings and non-living things gives us a contrasting property by which to characterise what kind of being the creator is.  We look at our own world and see that being alive is a fundamental property needed in order for puposeful and intentional activity to be executed. 

We can thus correctly infer that the creator of all things, by seeing that creation would require purposeful and intentional activities, is a living being. One of the invisible attributes that God has is that He is alive.  

We can see living and intelligent beings working to create sytems  in our physical plane ( albeit in a derivitive sense) and from that, clearly see how these attributes can be inferred or extrapolated to our invisible God who Himself created complex systems writ large.

Bless the almighty God.

Amen.

OUR LORD'S ETERNAL POWER

The created universe we live in displays three aspects of God: His invisible attributes, His eternal power and His divine nature. These three affirmations of God are enough to serve as the two or three witnesses by which a matter is confirmed as required in scripture and so there is enough evidence for God to be seen in nature for Him to gratefully honored by men.

The book of Romans chapter 1 verse 20 - 21 says it this way;

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

The eternal power of God is the specific item of study in this presentation. 

The power of God is a fearsome thing to grasp in one's mind. We humans, in our temporal experience, know that our strength and power increase from youth and then fade away as our age diminishes us. However, in God's case, His power is beyond comprehension in its magnitude and then, additionally, is eternal. 

Our God holds a gargantuan quantity of power that is also absolutely inexhaustible.

How awesome and wondrous our Lord and God is. 

Amen.

Reference attribution: www.knowing-jesus.com

OUR LORD WHOM WE WAIT UPON

In Luke 2 verse 25 - 32, the story of Simeon is told. Simeon had recieved a promise from God that He would live to see the promised Messiah. And now Simeon was reaching advanced years having waited to see God's promise, when one day, he recognized the baby Jesus' at the temple  to be the long awaited saviour of the world and he made this poignant and profound declaration:

 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.

For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

Alongside Simeon, a prophet named Anna,  who, after she had been widowed as a young woman,   had been praying and fasting in the temple every day for about 60 years as she waited for the arrival of the promised Son of God. Luke 2 verse 36 - 38 describes her encounter with the child:

Anna, a prophet, was also there in the Temple. She was the daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher, and she was very old. Her husband died when they had been married only seven years. 

Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the Temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer. 

She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem.

These two prophets of God waited for many years for the arrival of Jesus to the point of running out the clock on their lives, when at long last, the promise was fulfilled and they saw the one whom all the prophets of old had yearned to see.

In our time, having the knowledge of the perfection attained by our Lord Jesus to gain salvation by His death and of whose salvation we have so freely been made beneficiaries,  should gladly wait upon the Lord all the more.

In Psalm 130 verse 6, we see an example of an eager and expectant soul awaiting the Lord. Our souls should be in the same stance of anticipation as we wait for the Lord to fulfill His promises to us.

My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.

Waiting upon the Lord is our due honor to Him but our Lord, in His graciousness, directs advantages to us as a benefit of our waiting upon Him because we undergo a dramatic metamorphosis in our hearts as described in Isaiah 40 verse 31:

But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Those of us who wait upon the Lord like Simeon and Anna and the Psalmist did, are imbued with strength and stamina and endurance in the spirit where we can travail in the service of the kingdom of God so that where Jesus is, we may also be.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO WEEPS

In the story of the death of Jesus' friend Lazarus told in John 11 verse 33 - 35, Jesus was emotionally moved  in spirit and wept.

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept..

In Hebrews 5 verse 7,  Jesus is described as weeping as He prayed to His Father. It says it this way;

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission..

Our Lord wept as He lived among us, complete with our infirmities and He knew our sorrows so that He could empathize with us in every way as He serves as our high priest making intersession for us before God the Father as it says in Hebrews 4 verse 14 - 16;

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need..

Jesus' tears give us certainty that, though being God, He felt what we feel and knew the depths of our sorrows and grief.

Praise our Lord and God.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO ASCENDED

Jesus' final hours were marked by extreme fatigue for being awake for up to 33 hours starting from the morning of the day before the crucifixion to His death at around 3:00 in the afternoon. 

His last hours were also marked by deep humiliation from being lied about, derided, spat on and mocked. 

He was in emotional pain from being betrayed and abandoned by His friends as well as leaving His mother behind.

 He was in  existential pain when His sense of closeness with His father in heaven was stripped away. 

He was in excruciating  physical pain from being repeatedly struck on His head and face, scourged and nailed to a cross and lifted up, suspended between heaven and earth.

After undergoing this, His body began to fail under the prolonged duress. Multiple cycles of shock had come and gone and His body, getting no reprieve from the stresses, began to undergo  organ failure. 

Now, emptied of every last reserve of strength, He used His last breath to commit His Spirit to God His Father and He bowed His head and died.

The sinless, righteous, kind-hearted and brave Lamb of God, who had been obedient to His father through every moment of His life, remained perfectly obedient to God even to the final act of giving His life up to fulfill the requirements of His Father; that He die for the sins of the world.

As all these events were happening in a very public arena, a devine wisdom was at work cloaked in such secrecy that the end result of the death of Jesus was unknown to the spiritual rulers of the kingdom of darkness. This is outlined in  1 Corinthians 2 verse 6 - 8;

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

As apostle Paul said, truly they would not have crucified the Lord of glory because the death of Jesus made a passage for Him into the headquarters of the kingdom of darkness and it was while He was there, having passed every minute test of law, that the absolute perfection of the Son of God was given full expression in a reffulgent blast of light that tore the gates of hell off their hinges and rendered the kingdom of darkness a humiliated, broken and  defeated remnant of its rebellious ambitions.

All this was revealed to all of creation and Jesus emerged triumphant in ressurection that proved His victory over evil.

What then followed was the ascension into heaven where the man Jesus, having undergone the most brutal possible destruction of a human being, triumphed over death by having overcome the world by emerging as holy and perfect under the most stressful conditions imaginable.

Jesus was now given the throne of rulership over heaven and earth with total authority over every creature be it in heaven or earth or below the earth. He is the majesterial King above all kings and the Lord above all lords.

This is the ascended Jesus Christ. High and lifted up and worthy of all honor and praise forever and ever.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO MAKES THINGS NEW

In the beginning, described in Genesis chapter 1 starting in verse 1, the Lord created the heavens and the earth. They were brand new and in this sense, our God makes new things for the first time.

In another sense, our Lord makes things anew. He takes things that are old and replaces them with the new. An extensive example of this is in Revelation 21 verse 1 - 5.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. 

Here, heaven and earth are to be replaced by a new heaven and earth.

There is another sense where the Lord makes things new. In Isaiah 43 verse 18 - 19, the scripture says this;

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

In this sense of God working on new things, our Lord refreshes our lives by encouraging us not to dwell on the past. He makes new ways and streams in areas of our lives that were parched and dry. He brings new opportunities and renews our visions and perceptions so that we don't stagnate but bubble with newness of God's refreshing.

The Lord makes all things new: on the grand scale of heaven and earth and on the small scale with the new things He brings to our lives.

Bless our Lord and God.

Amen.